10 Really Cool Outdoor Adventures With Kids

10 Really Cool Outdoor Adventures With Kids

Posted On
October 31, 2016
at 5:26 am
by masterrandy / Comments Off on 10 Really Cool Outdoor Adventures With Kids

By Michael Lanza

Want to guarantee that your kids are always excited about getting outdoors as a family? Find adventures that excite them. We adults tend to look for nice scenery, but that, by itself, isn’t always going to fire up a school-age child or teenager. No matter what their age, kids want to engage with the outdoors—to get dirty and wet and climb around. By thinking a little more about trip planning, parents can find places and activities that inspire everyone scenically and experientially.

Ever since my kids were small, I’ve tried to plan family trips that matched their physical abilities, but that also would satisfy their innate need to explore and interact with their world—which fuels curiosity and ultimately, as a growing body of research suggests, helps them grow into smarter and healthier people.

“Exciting” doesn’t mean death defying or scary. Calibrate the adventure according to the desires and comfort levels of parents and kids—bearing in mind that, the older your children get, the more they’ll probably want to participate in the decision-making about family trips. As I suggest in tip no. 10 in my “10 Tips For Getting Your Teenager Outdoors With You:” Let your teen (and this applies to pre-teens) help plan your trip or activities, and he or she will feel more invested in and excited about the plans.

Some of the following trips require advance planning weeks or months in advance, others you can pull off without complicated logistics. For any that require advanced skills, professional guide services are widely available all over the country and easily found in online searches for options near your home, and many websites for national and state parks and other public lands list outfitters that have a permit to operate a guide service in the park, as well as free, ranger-led hikes and tours that can be much more thrilling than you might expect.

Below are 10 ideas for great trips, with links to stories at The Big Outside; but for most of them, you can find opportunities nearer to home, too.

Getting outside with your child doesn’t have to be expensive—but there’s also no more emotionally satisfying way to spend your money than on family travel. It forges strong bonds and cherished memories that stay with parents and children forever.

Rainbow Falls, Pisgah National Forest and Gorges State Park, N.C.

No. 1 Hike to a Waterfall or Swimming Hole

Some of the fondest and most enduring memories my kids and I have are of hiking through the rain of mist below Vernal Fall and Upper Yosemite Falls in Yosemite National Park, and walking through the tunnel blasted through solid rock behind Tunnel Falls in the Columbia Gorge. From playing in streams since they were very little to jumping into frigid mountains lakes as teenagers, my kids have always loved water in nature. It’s a guaranteed win.

Upper Yosemite Falls, Yosemite National Park.

Make a water feature your destination, or the payoff at the end of a hike, or just grant kids the latitude to stop en route to a summit or other destination to jump into or play in a lake or creek. Not only will they be happier, but it’s physically rejuvenating, cooling them off and soothing muscles and joints to help them get through a hike.

No. 2 Watch a Geyser Erupt

The first time we took our kids to Yellowstone National Park, they were too young to remember it—age four and two—but they laughed uproariously when Old Faithful erupted. (We hadn’t realized before that moment how apparently funny Old Faithful is.) The second time, when they were nine and almost seven, we cross-country skied along the Firehole River through the Upper Geyser Basin—home to one-fourth of the active geysers in the world and the greatest concentration of them, including Old Faithful—and the kids shouted excitedly and pointed at each geyser eruption happening before our eyes.

In any season and at any age, seeing Yellowstone’s thermal features (lead photo at top of story) is always a magical, fascinating experience. Visiting our first national park should be a requirement of U.S. citizenship. See all of my stories about Yellowstone National Park, including:

No. 3 Take a Hike With a High Thrill Factor

On my family’s most recent visit to Zion National Park, there was no question in my kids’ minds about us hiking up Zion’s most famous feature, Angels Landing. Then 14 and 12, Nate and Alex knew Angels’ reputation for steepness and exposure in the final quarter-mile to the summit—and that was all the motivation they needed. Walking along its knife-edge ridge, with chains in place as handholds and thousand-foot drop-offs to either side, measured up to their high expectations.

Challenging and exciting hikes like Zion’s Angels Landing and Hidden Canyon (which traverses a ledge across the face of a cliff) not only deliver a thrill for kids, they imbue them with self-confidence, because they will see many adults and other kids turning back before the hard section (although the technical difficulty of hiking Angels isn’t very high, and with reasonable caution, it’s perfectly safe). These hikes aren’t for everyone—and maybe kids will be more comfortable with it than a parent. But for the family that relishes this kind of thrill, a hike like Angels Landing really is unique and rewarding.

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No. 4 Float a Wilderness River

The raft containing my 12-year-old daughter, Alex, and three other kids age 12 to 14, with one of our guides at the oars, smashed into the train of tall, intimidating waves at Cliffside Rapid. At each wave, the raft reared back to ride over it, then nosed downward into the trough, sending the next wave crashing over the bow. With each wave, the four kids—riding bravely in the raft’s bow—briefly disappeared underwater. They rode the length of Cliffside screeching and laughing with delight.

On a six-day rafting and kayaking trip on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, which cuts through the heart of the vast, nearly 2.4 million-acre Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, my family and 21 friends and extended family enjoyed beautiful canyon scenery, great side hikes to waterfalls and overlooks hundreds of feet above the river, and big whitewater: The roughly 100-mile-long Middle Fork has some 300 ratable rapids, many of them class III and IV.

Multi-day river trips have a special quality to them. They’re thrilling but safe (when you choose a river within your skills or take a guided trip). You spend several days in the backcountry, completely disconnected from civilization, without the physical rigors of backpacking and far more creature comforts in camp. And for those who choose to just ride along in a raft with no responsibilities, these adventures are within reach of many people: On a multi-family float trip down the beginner-friendly Green River through Canyonlands National Park, our group ranged in age from four to 80. That Canyonlands trip earned an iconic place among my kids’ memories of our many adventures, and I’m sure they’ll always remember our Middle Fork trip as one of the best.

No. 5 Squeeze Through a Slot Canyon

We scrambled through a tight, twisting corridor in rock, pulling ourselves over short pour-offs, ducking through natural arches, and contorting our bodies to squeeze between wildly curved sandstone walls that frequently narrowed to just inches wide. And the four kids, age 10 to 12—mine, and two belonging to another dad with us—hardly stopped gushing about it.

“Wow, this is so cool!” “That’s amazing!” “Awesome!”

We were dayhiking Peek-a-Boo Gulch and Spooky Gulch, a pair of slot canyons in southern Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Created by occasional flash floods, the claustrophobic defiles known as slot canyons litter the Colorado Plateau. Some require technical skills and gear for rappelling, and proper clothing, like a dry suit, for wading for hours through cold water. But others, like the popular Peek-a-Boo and Spooky, are beginner-friendly and often dry, and those two can be hiked in just a few hours. All pose the deadly danger of flash floods, so only enter one with a forecast of sunshine.

Read about my family’s one-day adventure rappelling a slot canyon in Capitol Reef National Park, and backpacking five days through Paria Canyon, which has a narrows section stretching several miles and a tributary, Buckskin Gulch, that forms a true slot canyon about 12 miles long. The Subway and The Narrows in Zion National Park narrow to slot-canyon dimensions only briefly, but constitute two of the most dramatic and beautiful canyon hikes in the Southwest.

My nephew, Marco Garofalo, and a bighorn sheep in Dinosaur National Monument.

No. 6 See Big, Charismatic Wildlife

Mountain goat, Gunsight Pass Trail, Glacier.

As my family hiked up the Gunsight Pass Trail in Glacier National Park, on our way to 6,900-foot Gunsight Pass during a three-day backpacking trip, a mountain goat hopped onto the trail not 50 feet ahead of us, on a stretch where the path clings to the face of a cliff. We stopped, and my kids, then nine and seven, looked back and forth between the goat and my wife and me, simultaneously amazed and clearly wondering how to react. I’m quite sure that mountain goat—which eventually yielded the trail to us—seared a lasting impression on my children.

From my perspective as a parent, seeing large animals stirs in my kids—as in adults—powerful feelings of awe and humility in the presence of such magnificent creatures, instilling in them a deeper respect and appreciation for nature and the vital importance of protecting it.

Nate at the Reid Glacier, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska.

No. 7 Walk Up to a Glacier

We pulled our sea kayaks onto a rocky beach in southeast Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park and strode over to a wall of dirty ice several thousand years old. At the water’s edge, my nine-year-old son and I peered, transfixed, into the blue, dripping mouth of an icy alcove in the Reid Glacier—ice formed from snow that fell thousands of years ago, during the earliest days of human civilization.

Walking up to ancient ice gives you a sense of the vast spans of time over which natural processes occur—dwarfing the human footprint on history. It also helps adults and kids intellectualize the enormous breadth of changes already underway as the climate continues warming. (I wrote about my family’s sea kayaking trip among Glacier Bay’s rapidly retreating glaciers in my award-winning book, Before They’re Gone—A Family’s Year-Long Quest to Explore America’s Most Endangered National Parks.)

While North America’s glaciers are steadily shrinking and disappearing, like rivers of ice all over the world, you can still see some up close while sea kayaking in Glacier Bay or dayhiking or backpacking in numerous places, including:

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My family trekking the Alta Via 2 in Italy’s Dolomite Mountains.

No. 8 Trek or Ski to a Backcountry Hut or Yurt

On the first day of my family’s weeklong trek on the Alta Via 2, an alpine trail traversing Italy’s incomparable Dolomite Mountains, lasted nearly nine hours and included crossing one ridge that, from a distance, appeared to be an impassable wall of vertical rock hundreds of feet tall, and walking for hours through on-again, off-again rain showers. We reached the Rifugio Puez, a hut perched on the barren and rocky “altopiano,” tired and hungry. We’d come to the right place.

That evening, we sat in the small dining room, laughingly recalling our war story about the day’s adventure and plowing through a dinner fit for hungry trekkers: minestrone soup and a delicious dumpling soup; a ham, eggs, bacon, and potato dish; salad; and a substantial plate of penne in red sauce.

Dawn at Banner Ridge yurt, Boise National Forest, Idaho.

Hiking hut-to-hut or skiing to a backcountry hut or yurt offers a unique experience: a wonderful blend of a true mountain trek with the pleasant comforts of a substantial dinner and a warm, dry, thick mattress at the end of each day—which can be particularly alluring to families. Hut trekking and skiing to yurts rank among my kids’ favorite family adventures.

No. 9 Camp on a Wilderness Beach

Tiger Key, Ten Thousand Islands, Everglades National Park.

On a small, mangrove-covered island in Everglades National Park, we stood, hypnotized, watching the sun drop into the Gulf of Mexico every night. Backpacking the coast of Olympic National Park, we passed by scores of sea stacks and huge boulders wallpapered with sea stars, mussels, and sea anemones. Sea kayaking in Glacier Bay, we saw hundreds of seals, icebergs calving explosively into the ocean, and ice- and snow-covered mountains. In each place, we had a wilderness beach entirely to ourselves, where our kids could play in tide pools and explore some of the biologically richest environments on Earth.

Children love a beach. But a wilderness beach is so much more complex and fascinating to them—and pretty special for parents, too.

Nate near our high camp below the East Face of California’s Mount Whitney.

No. 10 Climb a Cliff or a Big Mountain

In blasts of frigid wind, our party kicked steps in firmly frozen snow, steadily making our way up the highest mountain in the Lower 48. At the broad, summit plateau, we stepped into the welcome warmth of sunshine, and the wind died down. A little while later, my 15-year-old son, Nate, and I stood together on top of California’s 14,505-foot Mount Whitney. The successful climax of a four-day climb, it also represented the culmination of several months during which Nate committed himself to training hard and helping to raise money for an organization, Big City Mountaineers, that brings kids from poor, urban backgrounds into the mountains, giving many of them their first opportunity to experience nature.

Alex climbing at Idaho’s Castle Rocks State Park.

Climbing a mountain or rock climbing gives you and your child the chance to share a powerful sense of accomplishment and self-discovery. It also demands some degree of fitness and requires that a kid be old enough to have the maturity and physical strength and stamina. Depending on your skills, you may need to hire professional guides.